How Jack âBailout Bonusâ Lew Got to Treasury

As I and many others have pointed out for years, unless you are a crony Wall Street welfare queen you can pretty much forget about any high level position in the Obama Administration. Barack made that clear from day one when he decided to surround himself with two of the people at the core of the 2008 financial crisis, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. The trend is simply continuing with the current nominee for Treasury Secretary: Jack âBailout Bonusâ Lew. The revolving door is institutionalized and at this point as reliable as a Swiss watch. From Bloomberg:

Jack Lew is the nominee for Treasury secretary whose own bonus as an investment banker was bailed out by the Treasury Department when it rescued Citigroup Inc. (C) in 2008. He owes much to Americaâs taxpayers. He should also be grateful to Citigroup for agreeing to let him rejoin the government without suffering much for it financially.

An intriguing revelation from Lewâs Senate confirmation hearing last week was that he stood to be paid handsomely by Citigroup if he left the company for a top U.S. government job, under his 2006 employment agreement with the bank. The wording of the pay provisions made it seem, at least to me, as if Citigroup might have agreed to pay Lew some sort of a bounty to seek out, and be appointed to, such a position.

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Of course he is close to one of the biggest snakes in the grass in modern American history, Robert Rubin.

He joined Citigroup in 2006 as chief operating officer of its global wealth-management division. Lew was recommended by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who at the time was chairman of Citigroupâs executive committee. (There seems to be an unwritten rule that every Treasury secretary must have deep ties to Rubin.)

Lewâs employment agreement with Citigroup said his âguaranteed incentive and retention awardâ wouldnât be paid if he quit his job, with limited exceptions. One was if he left Citigroup âas a result of your acceptance of a full-time high level position with the United States government or regulatory body.â

A similar provision concerned his stock-based compensation. If Lew left in 2008 or afterward to accept a high-level U.S. government position, all of his outstanding equity awards, including restricted stock, would vest immediately, the document said.

When I asked Citigroup what its rationale was for including the government-service exception, a spokeswoman, Danielle Romero-Apsilos, said: âCiti routinely accommodates individuals who wish to leave the firm to pursue a position in government or nonprofit sector.â I pointed out that the contract terms I was asking about didnât mention anything about a nonprofit, but she declined to elaborate on her statement.

Obama seems to go out of his way to pick the most incompetent people for appointees. Especially this time around.

Even during his last shake up I was concerned about moving people from heading one agency to heading a different one. That may work OK in a company with various departments but I prefer the heads of the CIA, DOD and even DOJ to have extensive experience in those areas.

This is how we get huge mistakes and incidents such as occurred in Benghazi.

The bottom line is that Obama has no experience in management nor even running the most rudimentary of organizations. We've been flying by the seat of our pants for four years and it shows.